As Brandon James Blackmore and Emily Ruth Gail Blackmore kept silent during their trial and their sentencing, left open was the question of what kind of parents would take their 13-year-old daughter to the United States for a polygamous marriage to their 49-year-old prophet.

CRANBROOK — The B.C. judge who sentenced a man and a woman to jail for taking a 13-year-old girl to the United States to marry the leader of their religious sect says he wants to “send a clear message” about the removal of children to the others in the polygamous community of Bountiful.

Nearly a decade ago, a B.C. government social worker got a fax from Texas child protective services outlining how a 13-year-old girl from the fundamentalist Mormon community had been illegally taken by her parents to the United State to marry their church’s prophet.